• Special issue/April 24, 1970
Yale's growth, New Haven's loss. by Sam Millei
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For The New Journal to maintain its regular publishing format would not be in the best interests of the Yale University community at this time. Rather, we feel that we can best respond to the current crisis by presenting a series of in-depth reports on issues of great concern to Yale and New Haven. The first in this series, a report on Yale's physical growth, had originally been planned for our next regular issue. Following this article is a proposal for Yale housing policy by the Student Community Housing Corporation. Copyright 1970 by The New Journal at Yale, Inc.
The summer riots of 1967 shattered Dick Lee's liberal fantasy that redevelopment could transform New Haven from a tired old factory town into a model "slumless" city. True, during his sixteen years in office, the face of the Elm City was neatly uplifted. One hundred and forty acres of unsightly slum property were leveled. Famous architects were recruited to fill in the gaping holes. The present landscape of the Center City is the legacy of Lee's highly-praised achievement. In place of the embarrassing Oak Street slum which nestled uncomfortably close to Yale, we now have a clean, modern, and highly profitable downtown area. But in the process of Mayor Lee's urban renewal, which he rightfully claimed would "revitalize the dying and blighted Central Business District," over six thousand units of housing were demolished. Close to seven thousand households (which included an estimated forty percent of the entire Negro population of the city) were relocated. The ultimate result of Lee's program was a housing deficit so serious that the National Commission on Civil Disorders stated in its report on violence in New Haven that "it is hard to escape the question of the relation of these large deficits ...and the unrest that led to the rioting." There simply was not enough low income housing built. With the completion of Church Street South only three thousand units will have been built under a Federal program to replace the six thousand demolished units. Eight hundred of these new units in Crown , Madison and University Towers are for upper income people; fourteen hundred are moderate income cooperatives; the remainder were built for elderly and low income families. The fact is indisputable that Yale was linked intimately with the Mayor's renewal policies. The University quickly saw the potential advantage in supporting the Lee program. The demolition of the Oak Street area, the city's worst slum, permitted the expansion of the Medical
School facilities and rid Yale of a most discomforting neighbor. The University's fmt chance to help things along came in 1955 when Lee's program was in need of working capital. Yale, at that time, purchased the city high schools at Broadway and Tower Parkway for a price far over the market value. The two colleges built there, Morse and Stiles, were credited as part of the city's urban renewal program. Another example of Yale's involvement with the clean-up-your-neighborhood-tear-down-a-slum effort came in 1962. Mr. J. Richardson Dilworth, a member of the Yale Corporation and of Macy's board of directors, had a talk with Lee that led ultimately to Macy's decision to come to New Haven . Yale was also instrumental in flnding the $4.5 million that Roger Stevens, the developer of the Chapel Square Mall, needed to complete his project. So the city, with no small amount of help from its friend , was able to get some pretty new buildings and eliminate some embarrassing eyesores. Even today, as facts stare glaringly into its face, the city does not seem ready to admit that New Haven's housing situation is a significant factor in its overall problems. And Yale is even more reluctant to claim its share of the blame or its part in correcting the imbalances of the situation. Aside from the arguments that Yale, as the city's leading institution and hoarder of social knowledge, might have a social responsibility to act, there is the fact that the University has a negative effect on the housing shortage in general. Yale's own expansion policies and its increasing enrollment have taken housing off the market while flooding it with new buyers. And Yale's studied indifference to the problems it causes is beginning to take its toll in the University's relationship with the city. Lee, before leaving office, called upon Yale to contribute three million dollars annually for the next three years to the city's ailing treasury. Yale has refused to act on this suggestion. Political opposition to Yale's voracious appetite for land also found expression in the Guida amendment, which New Haven's present Mayor proposed and saw passed while he was
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still a member of the Board of Aldermen. This legislation blocks the University from utilizing more land except by special dispensation from the Board of Aldermen. While it is still unclear whether the Guida amendment will be upheld by the courts, University officials have become extremely sensitive about where they make their new expansion. Kingman Brewster, in announcing the proposed construction of one thousand new units of university housing, was careful to state that it would be placed on land already owned by Yale. The announcement of this sorelyneeded addition to the university housing stock was met coolly by many city and community leaders. In a recent discussion about the city's housing problems sponsored by The New Journal, various critics of Yale expansion voiced the opinion that the one thousand new units would not significantly improve housing conditions in the wider New Haven community. They argued that since the new units will house only Yale students and faculty, the housing shortage faced by the community residents will not be erased. University officials insist that the additional units will take pressure off the local housing market by providing space on university land for Yale affiliates who now live offcampus. Community leaders counter with the assertion that further expansion of Yale enrollment over the next five years will more than eliminate the benefits of these new units. Whatever happens as a result of the new construction of University housing units, which we may not see for another three years, both Yale and New Haven desperately need new housing. In a recent article Yale admissions officer Paul Capra, the narrowly defeated Republican candidate for Mayor in the last election, asserted that Yale's dependence on the local housing market has more than doubled in the last five years. More than three thousand Yale students are presently living off-campus, and this figure promises to increase appreciably as over-crowding worsens on the undergraduate campus. Capra condemned Yale for its "enormously unresponsive posture ...to these worsening conditions."
He described the situation of the average middle-class New Haven worker as "so bad it's unmentionalbe." If this is the case, then where do the city's low-income residents stand? The intrusion of Y alies into the local market is particularly acute in the Inner City's last remaining low rent districts. Lake Place and Howard Avenue, where the University reportedly owns a considerable amount of property, are prime examples. Jim Drazen, Director of Housing Development for the Redevelopment Agency, claims that the influx of students into certain areas of the Hill have encouraged landlords to sub-divide their buildings into efficiencies and to raise substantially their rents. Large numbers of graduate students seeking housing also cause rents to rise in the areas surrounding Yale. In addition, landlords may choose from many applicants for a given apartment, and thus discrimination is made possible. Student encroachment on the city's scarce low-rent housing resources has become a serious point of tension between local residents and the University. It serves only to heighten the suspicion and distrust on the part of many community leaders, both black and white, who regard Yale as a monster that is going to devour the city. Sal Ruotolo, President of the Hill Neighborhood Housing Development Corporation, put it this way: "We've now got the YaleNew Haven Hospital. Yale's spreading out so much, they're going to start calling the city Yale-New Haven, period." In addition to reducing available lowincome housing, Yale expansion is displacing small businesses. Jim Drazen of the New Haven Redevelopment Agency discusses the effects of this displacement on the individual shopkeepers and on the community. "Without saying whether commercial and other kinds of supportive facilities are more or less important than housing, I think we can conclude that the community is poorer for the loss of them, and the market isn't always up to replacing them. When those units or stores were created, it was under a set of conditions that no longer exist. A lot of these businesses, although they might be described by a planner as marginal, do ren-
der services, in some instances to marginal people. But the marginal people, so-called, have to be considered in the planning process. " ...the guys with the economic muscle can move into the front block, or into new commercial properties that are developed along State Street, but a lot of these businesses fold up, and that's not only in some instances a personal tragedy for the small businessmen who are affected and are not yet sufficiently protected by Federal regulation and Federal relocation payments, but also in some senses a hardship on the people who rely on these places. "I guess there's not much sympathy out there for the people who frequent the bars along State Street for example, but there's a definite social thing that happens. People don't spill over onto the street and create any threat for the community. The buildings are ratty, they're obviously ratty, but they're a gathering place for a lot of middle-age single men who have nothing else to relate to. As each of these structures, along with SRO (single room occupancy) buildings, gets demolished, these people get flushed out onto the landscape without any facilities to reabsorb them. ''There are no entrepreneurs out there to replace the Strand hotel for example, or on a different level of thinking, from the point of view of a richer city fabric, the old Italian grocery stores, and the open air fruit market. For me, and this is a very personal reaction, the city is less interesting, less fascinating, a less diverse kind of place, as each of these stores and institutions gets pushed off." The Blossom Shop at 1080 Chapel Street is one business that must relocate because it now occupies the site of the future Mellon Gallery. Mr. Ed Lipson of the Blossom Shop emphasizes that he harbors no bitterness towards the University and its administration. Mr. Lipson criticizes the University, however, for not offering assistance to those it has forced to relocate. ''The University has not provided as well as it could have for those who have been displaced. It could have helped more. I feel that the existence of an accumulation of scholastic material such as will be kept in the Mellon Gallery is of greater value
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than my personal comfort and convenience. It will be a costly move, financially and mentally, and it has changed my life pattern, but who am I to stand in the way of an institution like the Mellon Gallery?" Sal Ruotolo has a contrasting view of the Mellon Gallery. "The fact that the Mellon Art Gallery will show some fme 18th century pictures is all well and good for those in the city who want to see that. But it's like putting a tennis court in Hill Central. Who's got tennis shoes, huh?" Ruotolo feels th at a major source of town-gown misunderstanding stems from the fact that the University fails to defme clearly and announce its fut ure building plans. He likened Yale to a "second City Hall" which "keeps things quiet, then boom - they're sprung." Universit y officials maintain that community members are unreasonable in their expectation of defmitive, longrange Yale plans Assistant Provost George Langdon, who is responsible for University construction, remarked, " We're not sure exactly what we're going to build in the fut ure, so we really can't announce definitive plans." He explained that the decision to build depended on many factors, including other University priorities and the wish es of the potential donor who would make new construction possible. Langdon admitted that the University is wary of community participation in th e planning of University construction . The problem , he asserted, was in determining just who represents the community - and which community? "Should the University take into consiedration the demands of every interest group in New Haven?" he asked . Yale's short-lived and unsuccessful attempt to establish a working relationship with the Black Coalition has prompted the University to seek advice when it comes to assessing " community views" from traditional sources in the city government. Langdon realistically stated that to expect no conflicts bet ween Yale and the city would be no nsense. But for Yale to turn its back on the community, especially at this critical time, would be folly .
Proposals (The following proposals have been developed over the last tJVe months by the Student Community Housing Corporation out of student members' research into student and community housing needs.)
Planning Council. A University-Community Planning Council should be established and undertake responsibility for initiating and reviewing all further University expansion. As a regulator of the University's physical growth, it should comprise the following members: four members from the Yale administration and faculty ; two members of the Yale student body - one from the graduate and professional schools and one from Yale College; three members from the city government including one from the Redevelopment Agency and one from the City Planning Commission ; and four members from community groups. Such a council, set up with similar purposes and membership, has been established. at the University of Pennsylvania. At Yale this council could oversee the use of a revolving fund. Revolving Fund. Instead of constructing two new colleges, Yale could establish a five million dollar housing investment fund either from the portfolio of University endowment funds or from an alumnus donor. Such a loan fund would not represent a decrease in the amount of the University's principal, since it is only a loan. It would, however, represent a better return than would the University's investment in a residential college. Such a fund could generate ten times as much housing for community and student use than could a similar amount specified for a new college. For, in conjunction with federal housing programs, this fund could wield tremendous leverage by serving as interim 'front-end', low interest financing for land acquisition and developmental costs of non-proirt sponsors. The fund could also serve as a limited dividend, housing partnership corpora-
tion to attract alum.n i as limited investors. The limited investor-partner would, bowever, realize the full tax-depreciation on whatever was built. Such initiative might induce more support for urban housing from other institutions and corporations. Such moneys have already been loaned by Harvard, Wesleyan, and MIT. In New Haven, these funds could be applied in the following ways: Route 34 site. The forty-three acres of state land for the continuation of Route 34 could be a unique resource to the city and to Yale. One or two thousand units of housing could be built there as well as expanded Medical School facilities , provided Yale assist those community groups who intend to halt the construction of the road . Should the st.ate dete.r mioe to build the road, Yale could assist in the developing of air rights over the roadbed by agreeing to help defray the cost of a building platform . Vartually a new community could be constructed on this site offering to students the opportunity to live in a diverse polity rather than in the academic village of the college. Sacramento State College constructed such a community for students, faculty, and workers with a federal below-market-interest-rate program for low and moderate income housing. In addition, such a development could make use of recent industrialized housing techniques to cut construction costs and time. Scattered sites. Like the MIT proposal for seventeen hundred units of mixed housing in Cambridge on many different sites, Yale could apply the housing investment to many vacant, smaller sites around the inner city for low-rise, high density housing. Such sites could also consist of existing buildings which need rehabilitation, such as large hotels and houses. These sites are particularly suited for housing communes and small cooperatives which seem to be a small but growing trend among students and younger faculty. Such sites also lend themselves for more immediate solutions of housing students and low-income families who,
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in the words of one Harvard administra-
tor, can share the same complex because they often have the same spatial needs. Suburban land holdings of the University have the promise of loosening the tight housing market in the inner city for minorities, if the University were to assume the task of helping to develop its land as weU as to change zoning restructions made upon it by the local municipality. Ownership and taxes. The University need not and should not own the land or act as landlord. University-owned land could be given at a nominal fee or leased on a long tenn basis. Title lo the land could be held instead by a community-based sponsor, by a limited dividend corporation, or by a cooperative corporation composed of all the residents of the project. Thus, the city retrieves taxes directly from the property or, as in the case of a lower income cooperative, from the State Department of Community Affairs tax abatement program.
Showings at 7:00 & 9:30 (unless otherwise noted)
Thursday. April 30 D.W. Griffith's ORPHANS OF THE STORM (1922) with Dorothy and Lillian Gish Friday, May 1 Max Ophuls' LA RONDE (1950) With Simone Signoret, Simone Simon, Danielle Darrieux, Jean-louis Barrault, Gerard Philipe Saturday, May 2 Sergio leone's FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1967) With Clint Eastwood, and Lee VanCleef Tuesday, May 5 Jean-luc Godard's ALPHAVILLE (1965) With Anna Karina (shows at 7:00, 9:00, & 11 :00) Wednesday, May 6 Norman Foster's (actually Orson Welles') JOURNEY INTO FEAR (1942) With Welles and Joseph Cotton Thursday, May 7 Charles Chaplin's HAUNTED HOUSE Friday, May 8 Jean¡ luc Godard's LE PETIT SOLDAT (1960) With Anna Karina, and Michel Subor Saturday, May 9 Oaude Chabrol's LES BICHES (1968) With Stephane Audran, Jacqueline Sassard, and Jean-louis Trintignant Tuesday, May 12 Kenji Mizoguchi's CHIKA MATSU MONOGATARI With Kazuo Hasegawa Wednesday, May 13 Ernst lubitsch's NINOTCHKA (1939) With Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas